This blog has frequently noted the hatred and homophobia that is being exported abroad by American Christofascists who are slowly but steadily losing the culture wars in America. As always, their favorite targets for their exported hate and bigotry is focused largely on backward and ignorant regions, especially in Africa, since ignorance and low levels of education are essential for the embrace of the American Christofascists' version of fundamentalist Christianity. A piece in Religion Dispatches recaps the efforts of American Christofascists to export homophobia. Note the blood on the hands of both Catholic and Anglican clerics in Africa. The real message, of course, is that the "godly Christians" are NOT nice and decent people. They are horrid people and the "good Christians" who sit on their hands silently are little better than the "good Germans" who were complicit in Hitler's rise to power. Here are selected article excerpts:

A couple articles this past week look at the work of anti-gay religious groups overseas. The National Journal’s Alex Seitz-Wald gives an overview
of American evangelicals’ efforts to encourage passage of anti-gay laws
around the world. Among the items mentioned is the work of Scott Lively
and others to launch an anti-gay group in Latvia that believes “there
is a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

At the Religion News Service, Gay Clark Jennings, an Episcopal priest, examines
“Homophobia in Christian Africa.” Jennings notes that many political
and diplomatic leaders have criticized passage of anti-gay bills in
Uganda and Nigeria, but says, “Many Christian leaders around the world,
regrettably, have been largely unwilling to criticize Christian leaders
in Africa who cheered the passage of these punitive laws.” She notes
with sadness that Anglican leaders in Uganda and Nigeria
“enthusiastically support” anti-gay legislation.

Western Christians cannot ignore the homophobia of these church
officials or the peril in which they place Ugandan and Nigerian LGBT
people. The legacy of colonial-era Christian missionaries and infusions
of cash from modern-day American conservatives have helped to create it.

She quotes Zimbabwean biblical scholar Masiiwa Ragies Gunda saying
that it is “far-fetched to look beyond the activities of Western
missionaries” when considering the role of the Bible in Africa. Jennings
says missionaries promoted a particular literalist approach to reading
the Bible.

The Toronto Star also considers
rising homophobia and anti-gay violence in Africa, suggesting that it
reflects, in addition to the work of American evangelicals, a backlash
by conservative forces against increasingly open advocacy for LGBT
equality.

As we reported last week, Catholic officials in Nigeria, including a
Cardinal, have praised the draconian anti-gay law that is generating
persecution and violence against gay people in that country. In India,
in contrast, Cardinal Oswald Gracias has opposed the Supreme Court ruling that recriminalized homosexuality.

Catholics and others have also protested remarks by a newly-named cardinal, Fernando Sebastián of Spain. Colegas, an LGBT rights group, has filed a complaint
charging that Sebastián’s comments violate Spanish law against acts
that provoke discrimination, hate or violence against groups based on
their sexual orientation.
In Washington, D.C. this week, Katrina Lantos Swett, Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, mentioned
the infamous anti-gay “propaganda” law as one of many repressive,
anti-democratic laws that have been adopted in Putin’s Russia. She said
that laws on “religious freedom” and “extremism” grant special favor to
the Orthodox Church while giving the government wide latitude to
discriminate against minority religions. That favored status is evident
in the construction of new high-profile Russian Orthodox churches
around the world whose construction costs are being paid by the Russian
government.

The propaganda law has most recently been used to fine
the editor of a newspaper in Khabarovsk in northeastern Russia for
printing an interview with a local geography teacher who is gay; the
court ruled that the teacher’s assertion that homosexuality is normal
violated the law.

We reported last week on the surge in arrests and trials in Shariah
courts in the wake of [Nigerian] President Goodluck Jonathan’s January 7 signing of
a draconian anti-gay law there. Last Thursday, Associated Press reported,
“Thousands of protesters threw stones into the Shariah court in a north
Nigerian city Wednesday, urging the speedy convictions and executions
of 11 men arrested for belonging to gay organizations.” This week,
Agence French Press reports
that two Islamic courts “have been forced to suspend the trials of 10
men accused of homosexuality because of fears of mob violence.”

There is much more in the article. The overall take away? Religion is a pervasive evil that deserves no deference and certainly no favored status - or tax exemption - under the civil laws.

I often mark the argument that backwardness and bigotry are impediments to economic progress. A new study reported on by the New York Times would seem to corroborate this premise in significant part. Where is social mobility the lowest? In the South and Bible Belt, of course. Where is it higher? Except for some surprising exceptions in the sparsely settled mid-west, in the Northeast and in the far west. In short, progressive areas where racism and homophobia are less prevalent provide a better opportunity for those born into the bottom economic classes of society to move up. In Virginia, the highest social mobility is not surprisingly found in Northern Virginia. The lowest social mobility is found across Virginia's largely reactionary south side - and area where the "godly Christians" hold sway. As for Hampton Roads, it does not fare too well either, something that ought to send a warning bell to area leaders. Here are article highlights:

The study — based on millions of anonymous earnings records and being
released this week by a team of top academic economists — is the first
with enough data to compare upward mobility across metropolitan areas.
These comparisons provide some of the most powerful evidence so far
about the factors that seem to drive people’s chances of rising beyond
the station of their birth, including education, family structure and
the economic layout of metropolitan areas.

Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and
industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in
Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh,Indianapolis, Cincinnati and
Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast,
Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City,
Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota.

“Where you grow up matters,” said Nathaniel Hendren,
a Harvard economist and one of the study’s authors. “There is
tremendous variation across the U.S. in the extent to which kids can
rise out of poverty.”

That variation does not stem simply from the fact that some areas have
higher average incomes: upward mobility rates, Mr. Hendren added, often
differ sharply in areas where average income is similar, like Atlanta
and Seattle.

The gaps can be stark. On average, fairly poor children in Seattle —
those who grew up in the 25th percentile of the national income
distribution — do as well financially when they grow up as middle-class
children — those who grew up at the 50th percentile — from Atlanta.

[T]he researchers identified four broad factors
that appeared to affect income mobility, including the size and
dispersion of the local middle class. All else being equal, upward
mobility tended to be higher in metropolitan areas where poor families
were more dispersed among mixed-income neighborhoods.

Income mobility was also higher in areas with more two-parent households,
better elementary schools and high schools, and more civic engagement,
including membership in religious and community groups.

Regions with larger black populations had lower upward-mobility rates.
But the researchers’ analysis suggested that this was not primarily
because of their race. Both white and black residents of Atlanta have
low upward mobility, for instance.

In previous studies of mobility, economists have found that a smaller
percentage of people escape childhood poverty in the United States than
in several other rich countries, including Canada, Australia, France,
Germany and Japan. The latest study is consistent with those findings.

That pattern makes economists more confident that the characteristics of different regions
— as opposed to something inherent and unchangeable in the local
residents — are helping cause the varying mobility rates.

Throughout the New Jersey "Bridgegate" scandal, Governor Chris Christie has claimed that he knew nothing about the contrived plan to cause traffic chaos at the George Washington Bridge. Now, a former Christie sycophant, David Wildstein who formerly served at the Port Authority is alleging that Christie knew all about it and that the lane closures were the result of a “the Christie administration’s order.” A copy of the letter from Wildstein's lawyer is here. If the allegation is true, it proves that ne should never lie about something when others may talk to save their own skin. Did Christie expect Wildstein to simply quietly fall on his sword? The New York Times looks at the new information. Here are excerpts:

The
former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings
at the George Washington Bridge, central to the scandal now swirling
around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, said on Friday that “evidence
exists” that the governor knew about the closings when they were
happening.

A
lawyer for the former official, David Wildstein, wrote a letter
describing the move to shut the lanes as “the Christie administration’s
order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having
knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were
closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour
press conference” three weeks ago.

During
his news conference, Mr. Christie specifically said he had no knowledge
that traffic lanes leading to the bridge had been closed until after
they were reopened. “I had no knowledge of this — of the planning, the
execution or anything about it — and that I first found out about it
after it was over,” he said. “And even then, what I was told was that it
was a traffic study.”

The
letter, which was sent as part of a dispute over Mr. Wildstein’s legal
fees, does not specify what the evidence is. Nonetheless, it marks a
striking break with a previous ally. Mr. Wildstein was a high school
classmate of Mr. Christie’s who was hired with the governor’s blessing
at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the
bridge.

Mr.
Christie’s office responded late in the day with a statement that
backed away somewhat from the governor’s previous assertions that he had
not known about the closings in September, which appeared to have been
carried out as political retaliation against the Democratic mayor of
Fort Lee, until they were reported in the news media. Instead, it
focused on what the letter did not suggest — that Mr. Christie knew of
the closings before they occurred.

The letter was sent from Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer, Alan L. Zegas, to the
Port Authority’s general counsel. It contested the agency’s decision not
to pay Mr. Wildstein’s legal fees related to investigations into the
lane closings by the United States attorney’s office and the State
Legislature.

The Legislature has sent subpoenas to Mr. Wildstein and 17 other people
as well as the governor’s campaign and administration seeking
information about the lane closings. That information is due back on
Monday.

But
the documents from Mr. Wildstein were heavily redacted, leaving clues
but no answers as to who else might have been involved. The documents
included, for example, texts between Mr. Wildstein and Ms. Kelly trying
to set up a meeting with the governor around the time the plan for the
lane closings was hatched. It is unclear, however, what the meeting was
about.

Mr.
Wildstein’s lawyer has promised to turn over full versions of those
emails to the committee investigating the matter, but as of Friday
evening, a spokesman for the committee said they had not been received.

His lawyer’s letter suggests that Mr. Wildstein was irritated, if not provoked, by Mr. Christie’s dismissiveness. “Mr.
Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor
made about him, and he can prove the inaccuracy of some,” the letter
added.

Also
on Friday, the lawyer for another aide to Mr. Christie sent a 19-page
letter to Reid J. Schar, the special counsel leading the legislative
committee’s investigation into the lane closures, asking him to withdraw
a subpoena seeking a wide range of documents and other materials from
the aide, saying it violated his Fifth Amendment rights.

It will be interesting to see how things continue to unfold. Obviously, if the allegations prove true, Christie's goose may be cooked in terms of any presidential aspirations.

Proving once again that they are the tawdry political whores of the hate merchants at The Family Foundation ("TFF"), the Republicans in the House of Delegates killed a bill that would have banned therapists from inflicting fraudulent and dangerous "ex-gay" therapy on minors. To these members of the GOP, the position of every legitimate medical and mental health organization in America means nothing. All that matters is that they follow their orders from Victoria Cobb and the Christofascists at TFF. Damaged lives and potential suicides just do not matter to these foul individuals. The Daily Press has coverage on this disappointing development. Here are highlights:

A House panel killed off legislation Thursday that would have
outlawed controversial therapies meant to turn gay children straight.

House Bill 1135 only dealt with licensed therapists treating people
under 18. Adults seeking the treatment still would have been free to do
so.

These therapies, often called conversion or restoration therapy,
don't work and have a long-lasting damaging effect on children who are
taught that being gay is a bad thing, and if it can't be cured it might
be their fault, or their parents', bill advocates argued.

The bill brought passionate testimony from both sides. Gail Dickert
of Alexandria told House members that the therapy convinced her that her
father molested her as a young child, turning her gay.He had not, she said. He died before she could tell him this was just a false memory planted by a therapist, she said.

In the end, members of a House Health, Welfare and Institutions
subcommittee killed the bill on a 4-1 party line vote, much as
supporters expected. Del. Robert Krupicka, D-Alexandria, was the only yes vote. Del.
Brenda Pogge, R-James City, said the issue wasn't ripe for change.Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, the bill sponsor, said he believes
the therapy will eventually be banned for children in Virginia, as it
is in California and New Jersey. "Hearts and minds are changing on this sexual orientation issue every
day," he said. "One day this will be the law in Virginia.… It's time we
had this conversation."

Brenda Pogge is an embarrassment to thinking Virginians. She certainly makes the voters in James City County look like cretins.

The Christofascists at The Family Foundation are not the only ones becoming hysterical that same sex marriage might become legal in Virginia and that Virginia might just be dragged into the 21st century. In the GOP controlled House of Delegates - which might as well be a branch of The Family Foundation - GOP extremist have passed a bill that would allow any member of the General Assembly to institute lawsuits or defend lawsuits challenging any Virginia statute of constitutional provision whenever the Attorney General refuses to defend an unconstitutional law. One can only imagine the batshitery that folks like Del. Bob Marshall would usher in if such a bill were passed into law. Hopefully, the measure will be killed in the Virginia Senate or, in the last instance, vetoed by Governor McAuliffe. Here are highlights from the Richmond Times Dispatch:

The House of Delegates on Friday gave preliminary approval to a
bill that would let any member of the General Assembly defend a law in
federal court if the attorney general refuses.

Herring said last week
that after “thorough review,” he found the ban to be in violation of the
equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment of the United States
Constitution.

“When we pass a law we expect our attorney will defend it and that the Constitution will be upheld,” Gilbert said.

Herring spokesman Michael
Kelly said that Gilbert has acknowledged his bill “is about opposing
marriage equality at all costs, even if it raises obvious constitutional
concerns about separation of powers, not to mention the limitless range
of negative consequences it could have in practice.”

The Virginia Constitution
empowers legislators to pass laws and the attorney general to represent
the state in legal proceedings, Kelly said. “That’s the way it should
stay.”

Gilbert’s measure, which
will be on the House floor for a final vote Monday, includes an
amendment by Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William. The amendment
would also give the House of Delegates, the state Senate or the entire
General Assembly the standing to file suit in federal court.

“No state legislature can
give itself such standing,” Morrissey said. “This bill cannot under any
circumstance withstand a challenge in federal court.

Carl Tobias, a law
professor at the University of Richmond, believes that even if the
proposal passed in both houses, Gov. Terry McAuliffe would likely veto
it. “The General Assembly can
prescribe standing for state courts, but it cannot create standing for
purposes of federal law,” Tobias said.

As an aside, I am often struck by the fact that it is generally - but not always - unattractive men like Gilbert who would be hard put to pick up a cute guy under any circumstance that are the most hyserically against same sex marriage and gay rights in general? By my tastes, Gilbert would make celibacy look attractive.

Lately, I have given a lot of focus to the pending case of Bostic v. Rainey pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in part because I know the plaintiffs and because of the recent change in position of the Attorney General's office spearheaded by Mark Herring who the boyfriend and I worked hard to get elected. But there is another same sex marriage case pending in Virginia that likewise challenges the heinous Marshall-Newman Amendment. This case, Harris v. Rainey, is pending in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the defendants are again Janet Rainey and also Thomas Roberts, Clerk of the Staunton Circuit Court. Yesterday the case was given class action status which means that the plaintiffs have been certified to represent (i) all same sex couples who have been barred from marrying in Virginia and (ii) all same sex couples who have married in other jurisdictions who have had recognition of the lawful marriage barred in Virginia. The approved class excepts out the four plaintiffs in Bostic v. Rainey so that no conflict exists between the two cases continuing on their separate paths through the courts. The courts ruling can be found here. The following is a press release from Lambda Legal:

Harrisonburg,
Va. - Today, a federal district court in Virginia certified as a class
action a lawsuit challenging that state's ban on marriage for same-sex
couples, extending the scope of those
represented in the lawsuit to all same-sex couples in the state who
cannot legally marry or whose legal marriages performed elsewhere are
not recognized by the Commonwealth.

The
case was initially filed on behalf of two couples by the American Civil
Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, Lambda Legal, and the law firm
Jenner and Block.

"We
want to be clear that we're fighting for families across the state,"
said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of
Virginia. "This marriage ban affects families in a number
of different ways by denying them the many protections that come with
marriage. It's important that our case address the many ways that
families are hurt by our discriminatory laws."

The lawsuit was originally filed on August 1,
and argued that, through the marriage bans, Virginia sent a purposeful
message that lesbians, gay men, and their children are viewed as
second-class
citizens who are undeserving of the legal sanction, respect,
protections, and support that heterosexuals and their families are able
to enjoy through marriage.

"We
are pleased that the Court has certified this case as a class action.
With this certification, all the same-sex couples in Virginia seeking
the freedom to marry and those who want Virginia
to recognize their marriages have officially become part of the fight
against the State's discriminatory constitutional and statutory marriage
bans," said Greg Nevins, Counsel in Lambda Legal's Southern Regional
Office based in Atlanta.

The
couples named originally in the class action case are: Joanne Harris,
38, and Jessica Duff, 33, of Staunton, who have been together since 2006
and have a four-year-old son, Jabari. Christy
Berghoff, 34, and Victoria Kidd, 35, who are from Winchester and have
been together almost ten years. They have a one year old daughter,
Lydia. They married legally in Washington, DC, but their home state does
not recognize their marriage.

"The
stories of our clients are just a small representation of the thousands
of stories across the country in states like Virginia that deny
same-sex couples the freedom to marry," said Joshua
Block, staff attorney with the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual and
Transgender Project. "We're glad that this case will apply to all
Virginians who wish to make a lifelong commitment to each other, and
hope that Virginia will follow the 17 other states that have
preceded it in granting marriage equality."

As in Bostic v. Rainey, Attorney General Mark Herring has indicated that he will cease to defend Virginia's unconstitutional same sex marriage bans. As of yesterday, the Court in Harris v. Rainey has ordered a status conference to determine where the case goes from here given the changed position of the Office of the Attorney General. This order can be found here. Interestingly, the order states:

On January 29, 2014, Roberts filed a supplemental response to plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment (Dkt No. 113). Roberts states that he takes no position on the constitutionality of Virginia's marriage laws, but notes that he is constrained to abide by them until otherwise directed by an appropriate authority.

Unlike the situation in Bostic v. Rainey with the Prince William Clerk of Court, who is represented by the religious extremists of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Roberts is represented by a private law firm. Moreover, The Family Foundation has not filed an amicus brief nor have the delusional five professors who challenge the truth of the APA position on gay parenting. One can only assume that the Christofascists must be scrambling in terror that Harris v. Rainey has the potential to suddenly leap ahead of Bostic v. Rainey in striking down Virginia's same sex marriage bans.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Due to the snow storm that hit the Hampton Roads area on Tuesday and Wednesday of the week, the hearing on oral arguments in Bostic v. Rainey, which challenges the constitutionality of Virginia's anti-gay Marshall Newman-Amendment originally set for yesterday had to be rescheduled due to road conditions (the City of Norfolk seemingly did little or nothing to city roads outside of clearing the Interstates). The hearing has been rescheduled to Tuesday, February 4, 2014, at 10:00 AM. Among those expected are Ted Olson and David Boies and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (whom I spoke with on Tuesday about the brief his office filed). Here are details from the American Foundation for Equal Rights:

Federal District Court of Eastern Virginia will hold its first hearing in the Bostic case for marriage equality
on Tuesday, February 4 at 10 a.m EST. Oral argument was originally
scheduled for Thursday, but was canceled due to inclement weather
conditions.

The hearing is expected to last two and a half hours. AFER’s
attorneys will make the case that bans on marriage for gay and lesbian
couples, like that in Virginia, violate the Equal Protection and Due
Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs are two
couples: Tim and Tony, who have been together for nearly 25 years, and
Carol and Mary, who have been together for nearly 30 years.

The House of Representatives has finally unveiled supposed immigration reform principles. Like everything else the GOP does nowadays, the "reform" would leave some in a permanent non-citizen status and still panders to the white supremacists within the GOP base that frankly doesn't want anyone who doesn't have white skin to become an American citizen. Not ever. Because only white Christians are "real Americans." It is a consistent theme with the GOP: some have rights and privileges and others do not. This "do not" category includes non-whites, particularly blacks and Hispanics, non-Christians, gays, and in many instances, even white women. A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP House vision of "reform." Here are excerpts:

The
Republican proposal predicates legalization for the undocumented on
stringent requirements and border enforcement. The House speaker, John
A. Boehner, ruled out any “special path to citizenship” for undocumented
migrants, but seemed to leave open the possibility that they could
eventually be naturalized. Even that stance, however, is likely to raise
hackles among conservatives.

Those
who take this ultraconservative position (including many aligned with
the Tea Party) are blind to the lessons of history. The United States
has a long track record not only of legalizing illegal immigrants, by
legislative or administrative action, but also of pairing legalization
with a grant of permanent residency, the prerequisite for
naturalization.

Even
the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, known mostly as a conservative
immigration measure, included provisions for suspending deportation
orders in cases in which deportation would separate families or
otherwise result in hardship. These provisions also included adjustment
to permanent resident status. The most recent legalization program,
under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, granted permanent
residency, or green cards, to 2.7 million people.

The
rationale for the linking of legalization and permanent residency is
straightforward. Legalization recognizes that the undocumented have
become part of our society — by working, paying taxes, raising families,
owning property and the like. In other words, we recognize their de
facto inclusion and we adjust their status to align with that reality.

[S]ince
the nation’s founding, we have always recognized that access to
citizenship is the best way to promote social and economic integration,
democratic participation and political equality.

The
alternative now envisioned by some House members — legal status without
access to citizenship — would effectively create a new stratum of
society, a permanent second class of Americans.

We have been down that road before, with grim results. The Asiatic
exclusion laws, in force from the 1880s to the World War II era, were
openly racist attempts to protect America from the “yellow peril” and
“unassimilables.” These laws not only prohibited most prospective
immigrants from China and other Asian countries from entering; they also
excluded all Asians from naturalized citizenship, including merchants
and professionals who were otherwise legal residents. In most Western
states exclusion from citizenship also meant exclusion from owning
agricultural property and from a range of occupations, from teaching to
commercial fishing.

Congress repealed the Chinese exclusion law in 1943, when China had
become an American war ally. By 1952 all the other Asian exclusion laws
had fallen.

Today’s
political opposition to a path to citizenship is out of sync with
democratic principles, historical practice and the vast majority of
public opinion. It is punitive in spirit. It also suggests an unease
with the prospect of more Latino voters. Republicans seem divided
between those who recognize the need to appeal to the growing Latino
electorate and those who would rather shut out prospective Latino voters
than try to win their support.

Citizenship
is precious. That is precisely why it shouldn’t be held hostage to
narrow, defeatist and racially discriminatory partisan interests.

With the 2014 Winter Games set to start in less than a week in a repressive dictatorship in all but name known as Russia, Slate provides a good look at the brutality of life for gays in Vladimir Putin's Russia. A horror to which the International Olympic Committee has closed its eyes just as it did to the Nazi's treatment of Jews in the 1930's. Sadly, companies like Coca-Cola have joined in this reprehensible behavior as previously noted on this blog. Bad things happen when good people sit on their hands and fail to act. Here are highlights from the Slate piece that give a view of the bad things now happening in Russia:

The issue of violence against gays in Russia is, of course, nothing
new. Before the passage of the new federal measure, several regional
governments passed identical laws, stripping gay citizens of legal
rights and human dignity. More than one-half of Russian gays reported
psychological abuse, while 16 percent experienced physical assault, and 7
percent were raped. Yet 77 percent also reported complete distrust of
the police, leaving most anti-gay crimes unreported.

By putting the government’s stamp
of approval on rampant Russian homophobia, Putin effectively declared
open season on gay people. As the Harvard study notes, violence against
gays in Russia isn’t considered violence at all; rather, it’s thought of
as a way for young males to prove their own heterosexuality—while
simultaneously cleansing society of an aberrant, pedophilic community.
That’s the motivation behind groups like Occupy Pedophilia, which lure in gay teens through social media in order to publicly humiliate them by beating them with sex toys or forcing them to drink urine.

In fact, much anti-gay violence comes from law enforcement officers themselves, who have brutally suppressed any public showing of gay tolerance. (That’s the law, after all.)

A strong and confident leader could have helped the country move beyond
its antediluvian conceptions of sexuality and gender. Instead, the
paranoid Putin has used gays as a common enemy and a scapegoat. He might
have scored political points with this stunt, both in his own country
and in the West. But the toll of his intolerance is currently being paid in human lives.

The boyfriend and I will not be tuning in to watch the Olympics. Nor will we be by products of its sponsors like Coke. In fact, the boyfriend's salon is switching the soft drinks it offers to clients to avoid Coke products.

The blatant hypocrisy of today's Republican Party of Virginia truly knows no limits. The party has become a coven of homophobic white supremacists who time and time again seek to make Virginia's laws conform to the radical and hate-filled religious beliefs of extremists at The Family Foundation and similar Christofascists organizations in the state. A case in point is the killing of legislation that would have protected Same Sex couple headed families. In the world of the Virginia GOP only some families and only some Virginians merit legal protection and civil rights. And those Virginians who matter to the Virginia GOP are white conservative Protestant heterosexuals. Everyone else, if the Virginia GOP could have its way, need to leave Virginia. Leading the charge, of course, is The Family Foundation, a group that deserves a hate group designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Think Progress looks at this latest vicious hypocrisy. Here are highlights:

On an unrecorded 5 to 4
vote vote, a subcommittee in Virginia’s House of Delegates killed a
bill to allow second-parent adoption for children whose parents are not
legally married. The bils opponents have taken pains to identify
themselves as “pro-family.”

In the heavily-GOP House of Delegates, House Bill 1113 was offered by Delegate Joseph Yost (who earlier this week became the first Republican legislator
in the state to endorse marriage equality). It would have allowed for a
“a person other than the spouse of a parent” to adopt a child “if the
child has only one parent, the adoption would not terminate the parental
rights of the parent, and the parent joins in the petition for the
purpose of indicating his consent.” This would have given legal
protections to thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples in Virginia — a state with a constitutional prohibition on marriages, civil unions, or any other legal status for same-sex couples.

“You can measure the strength of a democracy by the way it treats its children,” Yost told his House colleagues
who serve on the Courts of Justice Civil Law Subcommittee. “This vote
before you today is not about Democrats, Republicans, gay couples,
straight couples. It’s about kids.” But despite his pleas — and those of
two Virginia parents whose co-parents are legally strangers to their
children, the majority of the subcommittee was unswayed. They instead
sided with the bogus claims of a representative from the anti-LGBT
Family Foundation, who warned that the bill would represent “sea
change” in policy and would open the door “to a lot of situations that
are, in social science, proven very, very unstable.” The group claims
its aim is to “strengthen families in Virginia.”

With no debate, the committee voted to table the bill without even a
recorded vote. Chairman Greg Habeeb (R), voted to kill the bill despite
his campaign slogan of “fighting for Roanoke Valley Families” and his boasts of a “pro-family record.” Delegate Ben Chafin (R) joined him, despite his claims of being “a dedicated family man” who “will fight for family values in Richmond,” as did Jeff Campbell (R), whose parents, he claims, “believed in the value of hard work” and instilled in him “the importance of family and community.” Terry Kilgore (R) and family-law attorney
Jay Leftwich (R) took the total to five. None of the five responded
immediately to ThinkProgress inquiries as to their rationales.

James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia, told
ThinkProgress, “By denying passage of the second-parent adoption bill,
Delegates Habeeb, Kilgore, Leftwich, Chafin, and Campbell are simply
denying children across Virginia who are being raised by loving lesbian
or gay parents the protection and security that having two legal parents
would offer.” He noted that the state “already recognizes both parents
in those families that have completed second-parent adoptions in other
states,” so the bill simply “would have allowed children in Virginia to
establish these same legal ties to their own parents.”

Hate, racism, homophobia, and hypocrisy are the hallmarks of today's Republican Party of Virginia.

As I have noted before, the Oscar nominated movie Philomena is a must see. Not only is the acting superb but the movie is based on a true story and in the end is a staggering indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, the United Nations is demanding accountability and more importantly records on the Church's Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and the manner in which young women were forced to relinquish their babies to adoption - often for a fee paid to the religious order running the horrid institutions. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to claim that it had and still has no control over these orders and institutions located outside of the Vatican. It's the same disingenuous approach that has been taken by the Vatican in seeking to shirk blame for the worldwide sex abuse scandal. Here are highlights from Religion Dispatches:

In addition to calling
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles J. Scicluna to account for
a decades-long, worldwide epidemic of child sexual abuse by Catholic
clergy, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
the UN Committee conducting this historic proceeding in Geneva last week
also demanded responses to questions concerning the church’s trampling
on girls’ reproductive health and rights.

Chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg and others wanted to know what the church
was doing about uncovering the whereabouts of the children born to
young, unmarried women who were essentially enslaved in Ireland’s
Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and forced to relinquish their babies to
adoption, a situation brilliantly dramatized in the film Philomena, with Oscar-nominated Judi Dench playing the real Philomena Lee.

“The position of the Holy See,” pronounced Tomasi, the Vatican’s Geneva
representative to the UN, “is that the state has already taken its
responsibility and is proceeding…through the courts….It is the
responsibility of local institutions.” In other words, it’s not our job—
the same position the Vatican officials took, repeatedly and
disingenuously, on their refusal to act on local clergy sex abuse
crimes.

Charging that the policy of the church institutions that ran the Laundries has not been
to turn over their records, a blunt Sandberg issued a challenge: “I
trust that you will ask the local churches to do that.” Neither Tomasi
nor Scicluna, formerly the Vatican’s top sex abuse prosecutor, said that
they would.

The chairwoman also brought up the story from Brazil of “the
nine-year-old girl who had an emergency life-saving abortion after rape
by her stepfather,” followed by the excommunication of mother and
doctor, “with no measure taken against the father,” aka, the rapist.
“Explain this,” Sandberg said. In that case, regional archbishops Jose
Cardoso Sobrinho astonishingly admitted that the rapist had “committed
an extremely serious crime,” but that “abortion is even more serious.”

Soon after, another committee member, Hungary’s Maria Herczog,
brought up a situation from Nicaragua, where the Catholic Church
vigorously supports a ban on all abortions. The situation involved “a
ten-year-old girl forced to give birth after being raped, with the full
support of the Catholic Church and the local community.

The church’s recent history worldwide is replete with stories of
priests forcing the women they impregnated to have abortions; of nuns
impregnated by priests being thrown out of their convents while the men
remain priests in good standing; of mothers of priests’ children being
forced to sign confidentiality agreements to get any support at all.

These issues—forcing children to bear children, forced child
relinquishment, abandonment of children by Catholic priests—were not the
main subjects of this hearing, but that they were mentioned is
noteworthy because the church’s history of child abuse has taken many
forms. And that history is tied intimately to the hierarchy’s history
of secrecy, hypocrisy on the sexuality of its own clerics, misogyny
which denies women’s moral authority, and gender apartheid, which
relegates women to second-class status and surely enabled those all-male
power brokers in clerical collars to callously dismiss the desperate
mothers of molested children who came to them for action.

There is more to the piece that deserves a full read. The bottom line is that as an institution the Roman Catholic Church - and most certainly its hierarchy from the Pope on down - is morally bankrupt and unworthy of any respect, at least by decent moral people. Those who continue to attend mass and contribute to the Church monetarily are complicit in the horrors done by the hierarchy and the predators that it protects. Catholics need to open their eyes to the truth and walk away. The Vatican and the hierarchy will only change if and when the Church's survival is seriously threatened by a mass exodus of members and a shutting off of the money spigot

I have long maintained that racism is one of the primary motivators for today's GOP base which is increasingly comprised of angry white men and their subservient women who are enraged that their white privilege is being eroded by "those people." Now, the GOP has finally had the honesty to tacitly admit that it is a racist party and that racism is behind the GOP opposition to immigration reform. If one isn't a white preferably conservative Christian, today's GOP base doesn't want you in America, End of discussion. Think Progress looks at recent GOP acknowledgment of the party's racism. Here are excerpts:

House Republicans have used a variety of excuses — citing Obamacare, sequestration, Syria, or the drug war
— to explain their reasons for not passing a comprehensive immigration
bill. But a Republican congressman cited one reason for the stalemate
the GOP won’t admit publicly. The Southern congressman told BuzzFeed it is a matter of race.

“Part of it, I think — and I hate to say this, because these are my
people — but I hate to say it, but it’s racial,” said the lawmaker, who
remained anonymous. “If you go to town halls people say things like,
‘These people have different cultural customs than we do.’ And that’s
code for race.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted that race and demagoguery has always
been a factor when it’s come to U.S. immigration policy, and it
certainly is one now. “There’s nothing new going on today that’s gone on
before,” Graham said. “This isn’t the first time that there’s been some
ugliness around the issue of immigration.”

Ever since President Obama’s second-term push to pass immigration
reform, the anti-reform caucus has used coded language and even racial
insults to make a case against a path to citizenship for the
undocumented. The GOP’s attempt to appear as a more welcoming party is
still undermined by its nativists. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has spoken
about young immigrants being “drug mules” with “cantaloupe-sized caves,” as Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach continues the drum-beat for self-deportation. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) made a case against multiculturalism, saying, “there’s only one race here, it’s the American race.”

The opposition puts Republicans at odds with Americans’ overwhelming support for immigration reform and a path to citizenship.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that Hillary Clinton has a 61 point lead over the next closest potential Democratic nominee for the 2016 presidential contest. While things can always happen in politics, if Hillary is in fact running for president and wins the nomination, expect the GOP - especially the Christofascists and conspiracy theorists to go utterly berserk. The downside, of course, is that if she runs and the GOP does nothing but attempts at character assignation and bashing, the likelihood is increased that many women will defect from whoever the GOP nominee may be out of disgust over the woman bashing and what may come to look like an insane anti-Hillary obsession. First some details from the Washington Post on the poll findings:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's 61-point edge over Joe Biden in new Washington Post-ABC News polling
makes her the single biggest frontrunner for a Democratic presidential
nomination in the history of the poll, an affirmation of the
conventional wisdom that the nomination is hers for the taking.

On its face, these numbers are a massive boon for Clinton -- indicative
of her status as the unquestioned and, at this point, unchallenged
frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. It also
proves a point we -- and many others -- have been making for quite some
time now: Clinton is a much larger favorite to be the nominee at this
point in the 2016 process than she was at this same time (or ever) in
the 2008 contest. And, while the hypothetical 2008 matchup showed three
candidates -- Obama, Edwards and Gore -- with real followings immune
from Clinton's frontrunner status, there is no one out there in 2016
that can make the same claim.

If you are looking for a dark cloud in these numbers -- and, to be honest, you really
have to look -- it's that Clinton has nowhere to go but down. Assuming
some candidate -- Howard Dean? Martin O'Malley? -- decides to damn the
torpedoes and challenge her, it's hard to imagine that Clinton wins
every primary by 60 points (although she could). Given that the prospect
of a serious challenge seems, at this point, laughable, any sort of
decent showing by a challenger to Clinton will receive wall-to-wall
coverage -- "Is it deja vu all over again for Hillary????" and so on and
so forth -- that makes the race look a lot closer than it actually is.

So what does a Hillary presidential run mean for the GOP? Andrew Sullivan engages in some speculation. Here are excerpts from a post here:

And whom do the Republicans have? Their centrists are pedestrian,
Pawlenty-style Midwesterners with little of the personality and star
power that a presidential campaign demands. I mean: Walker? Kasich?
They’re solid governors, but … it’s hard to see them in the White House.
The base faves – a Ted Cruz or a Rand Paul – could get the nomination
pretty quickly, given the new primary calendar and rules. But it would
be very hard to frame a race between Clinton and, say, Cruz, as anything
but a Johnson-Goldwater moment.

And then there is this from American Prospect on the GOP's irrational hatred of Hillary:

[T]here's an impulse when it comes to Hillary Clinton that presents a
real danger for Republicans. There are so many things they hate about
her and her husband that they barely know where to start. And that
hatred could well be their undoing.

Even after all this time, and after the Clinton impeachment turned out
to be such a disaster for them, so many conservatives still can't wrap
their heads around the idea that other Americans don't think about that
episode in the same way they do. For them, it's a tale of crime and
injustice, the injustice being the fact that Bill Clinton got away with
it. It goes right to the heart of what they hated so much about him. It
wasn't that they had policy differences with him, though they did. What
angered them so much about Bill Clinton was that he was better at
politics than they were.

[M]ost Americans don't have the same reaction. First of all, they
aren't that angry about it anymore. It was a decade and a half ago. And
second, their memories of the whole sordid affair are as much about
Republicans going too far—an impeachment that never should have
happened, Ken Starr's salacious and obsessive pursuit of Clinton, an
opposition party that grew more desperate and deranged the clearer it
became that they'd never take down their white whale—as they are about
the President's misdeeds.

As for Hillary, well as far as they're concerned she's complicit in
everything Bill did, and then you can add to that the contempt they have
for her as a powerful woman. You just cannot overestimate the degree to
which Hillary Clinton brings out the ugliest misogynistic feelings and
sexual insecurities in so many people (not all of them conservatives, I
would add). This is something I've written about before, and I'm sure I'll be writing about it again, because it's going to be a central part of any campaign in which she's involved.

There are few things more fundamental to smart political strategy
than the understanding that other people may not share your beliefs, and
may not have the same emotional reactions you do to certain people and
events. That understanding is what allows you to make thoughtful
decisions about how to persuade the number of people you need to achieve
your political goals, whether it's passing a piece of legislation or
winning an election. This is something Republicans often struggle with,
but when it comes to the Clintons, they're absolutely blinded by hate. [T]he more they talk about it, the more voters will become convinced that they've taken leave of their senses. And that, more than anything else, may be what gives Hillary Clinton
such a good chance of winning in 2016. When they're looking at her, her
opponents just can't see straight.

The forces of evil - i.e., the Christofascists and other supporters of "ex-gay" therapy - suffered another major loss yesterday when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California's ban on "ex-gay" therapy for minors. As noted many times on this blog, perpetuating the myth that being gay is a "choice" and subject to "cure" is a critical element of the Christofascist agenda to deprive LGBT individuals of legal protections and equal civil rights. New Jersey has passed a similar ban and bills that would impose similar bans on the dangerous and fraudulent therapy are pending in at least three states (including Virginia). The National Center for Lesbian Rights has details on this welcomed action by the Ninth Circuit. Here are highlights from a press release on the ruling:

(San Francisco, CA, January 29, 2014)—Today, the full U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit let stand an earlier decision by a
three-judge panel of the same court upholding Senate Bill 1172, a
California statute enacted in 2012 that protects minors from dangerous
and ineffective mental health treatments that falsely claim to be able
to change a young person’s sexual orientation.

The California Legislature enacted the law to prevent state-licensed
mental health professionals from attempting to change the sexual
orientation or gender expression of minor patients. The Legislature
based the law on the unanimous consensus of the nation’s leading medical
and mental health associations that such purported treatments have no
scientific basis and put children at risk of serious harms, including
depression and suicide.

In the lawsuit that the Ninth Circuit ruled in today, the statute was
challenged by therapists who wish to engage in these practices on minor
patients and who argued that the law violated their right to freedom of
speech. In August 2013, a panel of the Ninth Circuit held that
California’s law was a permissible regulation of medical treatment to
protect public health and safety and did not violate the free speech
rights of therapists. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling today allows that
decision to stand, thereby ensuring that California’s law will remain in
effect.

New Jersey enacted a similar law in 2013. A federal district court upheld
New Jersey’s law on November 8, 2013, and that law is currently the
subject of an appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit. In that litigation, NCLR represents Garden State Equality, New
Jersey’s largest LGBT rights organization.

As stated before, these bans need to be enacted nationwide and to the extent quacks hiding behind religious based "ministries" that continue to subject minors to such "therapy" needs to be sued for the harm that they do. As for parents forcing their children into such voodoo like therapy, they need to be prosecuted for child abuse.

Few Republican elected officials are more insane and backward thinking than those in the Virginia House of Delegates - except for those in the U.S. House of Representatives where the GOP is the "party of No" and batshitery is the norm. Now, some are predicting that the obstructionism and willingness of the House GOP to throw millions of Americans under the bus may be about to come back and bite the GOP in U.S. Senate races. If this happens, it obviously would be a sweet pay back that would help insure that the most insane and draconian legislation flowing from the House could be killed in the Senate. A column in the New York Times looks at this possible political pay back. Here are excerpts:

To
Representative Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, his vote this month
against a 1,582-page, $1.1 trillion spending bill was at once a stand
for fiscal sanity and a protest against spending cuts to rural
communities, a “constructive no,” as he put it last week.

His
opponents in the race for Montana’s open Senate seat quickly labeled it
a vote against increased funding for the Indian Health Service, Pell
Grants for low-income college students, mental health benefits for
veterans and traumatic brain injury assistance for those who fought in
Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as an effort to dry up the clean water
supplies of rural Montanans.

The
attacks on that one vote from Montana Democrats, including a possible
challenger in Lt. Gov. John Walsh, highlighted a vulnerability to the
Republicans’ quest for control of the Senate: They draw heavily from the
unpopular House for candidates.

“They’re
just trying to remind you these guys are members of a very unpopular
body,” said Jennifer Duffy, the Senate analyst at Cook Political Report,
a nonpartisan election newsletter. “It’s something that worked well for
them in 2012.”

[T]o take control of the Senate, Republicans need to net six seats, and
they will probably need to do it with candidates currently serving in
House seats in Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Georgia.

In 2012, Republicans fielded House members or former House members in
Senate contests in North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Florida, Michigan,
New Mexico and Arizona. Six of them lost . . . . In contrast, five of the six House Democrats seeking a seat in the upper chamber in 2012 won.

The effort to sully House Republicans has already begun. An advertisement
funded by the Senate Majority PAC intones, “In Louisiana, we expect
leaders to solve problems,” with an aerial shot of the countryside. The
voice-over continues, “not become part of the problem,” as the image
switches to the House floor and Representative Bill Cassidy, the
Republican hoping to challenge the re-election of Senator Mary L.
Landrieu, a Democrat. The ad then hangs the October government shutdown
and House-approved budget cuts to Medicare around the neck of Mr.
Cassidy, a three-term House veteran.

Republicans cannot get complacent, rerunning the 2010 playbook and
simply attacking Mr. Obama and the health care law as they did in 2012,
said Rob Jesmer, who led the Republican senatorial campaign that year.
Rather, they will need a positive agenda to explain why they should take
the Senate.

I for one hope that the GOP stumbles again and that the Democrats hold the Senate.

As noted on Tuesday, Virginia Senate Democrats have used GOP enacted rules to take over control of Senate committees and now plan to revive bills previously killed by Republicans earlier in the 2014 session of the Virginia General Assembly. While revived bills will still have to clear the House of Delegates which is controlled by some of the most insane Republicans in Virginia, with Senate control with the Democrats, to pass anything into law, the Virginia GOP will now have to compromise - among some of the bills to be revived are gay friendly bills. This, of course will drive the Christofascists and Tea Party loons of the GOP base into hysterics. It ought to make for interesting entertainment. Here are excerpts from a piece in the Roanoke Times:

There was a lot of political theater on the
floor of the Virginia Senate on Tuesday when Democrats used the
lieutenant governor’s tie-breaking vote to wrestle control of the evenly
divided chamber from Republicans.Democrats — now installed as chairs on all 11 Senate committees, nine
of which feature majorities — are expected to try to revive some
legislation that was defeated earlier in the session when Republicans
were in control.

Among the bills that could be given new life is a
measure to codify the inclusion of gay and transgender Virginians as
part of the state’s nondiscrimination hiring policy. SB 248 failed in
the General Laws Committee last week on a 7-7 vote. The committee now
has eight Democrats and seven Republicans.

Likewise, a bill to provide in-state tuition to
the children of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “Dream Act,” is
also expected to be revived in the Democrat-fattened Senate Education
and Health Committee, where it was defeated last week on a 7-6
party-line vote.

And gun control bills like SB 520, which was
defeated Monday in the Courts of Justice Committee, could also be
resurrected with a new, 9-6 Democratic majority on the panel.

With 20 members in the 40-member Senate and the vote of Democratic
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, Democrats could also defeat bills on the Senate
floor that have already advanced thanks to earlier GOP committee
majorities.

In most cases, the Democrats’ successes could be
short-lived, given the GOP-dominant House of Delegates. But passage in
the Senate would provide material for Democratic campaign brochures in
the upcoming 2015 Senate elections, when the GOP is expected to mount a
significant campaign to again shift the balance of power.

Up until now, I cannot think of a single Republican member of the Virginia General Assembly who has supported same sex marriage - something that would be heresy to the Christofascists at The Family Foundation - a ruthless hate group in all but formal designation - which rules the Virginia GOP with an iron hand. Yet now, somewhat amazingly, Del. Joseph Yost (R-Giles County) who is pictured above not only attended the Equality Virginia legislative reception on Tuesday evening - most Republicans regularly boycott the event - but also said he supports same sex marriage. Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation must be still writhing in convulsions! Note, Yost is younger than the typical member of the General Assembly and perhaps is representative of the under 30 generations who support same sex marriage by a significant majority. The Washington Blade has exclusive details. Here are highlights:

A member of the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday became the first
Republican state lawmaker to back marriage rights for same-sex couples.

“As far as same-sex marriage goes, it does not bother me,” state Del.
Joseph Yost (R-Giles County) told the Washington Blade during an
interview at an Equality Virginia reception that took place at the
Library of Virginia in downtown Richmond. “Why not?”

Yost, who represents the 12th Senate District that includes Radford,
Giles County and portions of Montgomery and Pulaski Counties in
southwestern Virginia, spoke with the Blade less than a week after Attorney General Mark Herring announced
he would not defend the commonwealth’s constitutional amendment that
defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Yost, 27, also discussed
the Republican Party of Virginia’s blistering criticisms of Herring over
his announcement.

“It boils down to tradition; it’s just a generational gap,” said
Yost. “I don’t think the government should be involved in marriage
period — straight or gay. I feel like we have bigger things to worry
about.”

The House of Delegates Civil Law Committee later on Wednesday is
scheduled to vote on Yost’s bill that seeks to extend adoption rights to
same-sex couples in Virginia. A state Senate committee on Jan. 24 killed an identical measure that state Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax County) introduced earlier this month.

Yost earlier this month introduced a bill that sought to extend adoption rights to same-sex couples in Virginia. “It’s pretty much a no-brainer issue,” Yost told the Blade. “It’s not
about Democrats; it’s not about Republicans; it’s not about gay
couples; it’s not about straight couples. It’s about the kids.”

Yost further discussed the issue. “If there are two loving individuals out there who want to raise a
child together, I see no reason why they can’t,” he said. “Quite frankly
it’s about fairness.”

State Del. Ron Villanueva (R-Virginia Beach) earlier this month
introduced a bill that sought to ban anti-LGBT employment discrimination
in Virginia. State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Winchester) last week
voted for a bill that would have banned discrimination against LGBT
state employees, while state Dels. Gordon Helsel (R-Poquoson) and Tom
Rust (R-Fairfax County) have co-sponsored Yost’s second-parent adoption
measure.

“I come from a younger generation,” he said. “I don’t get wrapped around
the axle on these issues like some of my other colleagues. I think the
more young people you see coming into politics, that’s what’s going to
happen.”

I have long argued that the Virginia GOP is committing long term suicide if it doesn't cease being a tool of the backward thinking closet white supremacists and raging homophobes at The Family Foundation. Perhaps a few Republicans are finally waking up to this reality.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

As noted in the prior post, even though the hearing in Bostic v. Rainey is being rescheduled, it is worthwhile to revisit the competing arguments before the Court. One interesting aspect of the case is that the briefs on file basically will pit the arguments set forth by former Virginia General Ken Cuccinelli (which have been adopted by Michele McQuigg the Clerk of the Prince Willaim County Circuit Court) against those now made by Virginia's new Attorney General, Mark Herring. Another interesting wrinkle is that George Schaefer, Clerk of the Norfolk Circuit Court, is represented by the firm in which former Governor Bob McDonnell was a member until he was elected Attorney General. Both Cuccinelli and McDonnell have a documented history of anti-gay bigotry. In addition to the plaintiffs and the defendants, the other parties filing briefs are (i) The Family Foundation, a vitriolically anti-gay "family values" organization and (ii) five professors, most holding positions with religious affiliated universities with strong anti-gay dogmas.

Plaintiffs: The arguments of the plaintiffs and, now Attorney General Mark Herring, can be summarized as (a) Marriage is a fundamental that does not exclude same sex couples, (B) the 43 year old ruling of the Minnesota Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson is not controlling given subsequent court decisions, (B) Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution applies to ALL citizens, (D) religious based belief and/or animus towards a group does not constitute a constitutional rational basis for discriminatory laws, (E) anti-gay laws are subject to heightened scrutiny by the courts, and (D) the defendants' proffered evidence of "tradition" and alleged preferred child rearing views do not justify anti-gay discriminatory bans on same sex marriage. In making this argument, the plaintiffs' memorandum of laws laid out the anti-gay animus underlying the Marshall-Newman Amendment. Here are excerpts from the Plaintiffs' memorandum of law:

12. House Bill Number 751 also included in its “legislative findings” that there are “life shortening and health compromising consequences of homosexual behavior” that inure “to the detriment of all citizens regardless of their sexual orientation or inclination.” Id.

13. In 2004, Richard Black, one of the co-sponsors of House Bill Number 751, publicly stated, “The whole agenda of the homosexual movement is to entice children to submit to sex practices. Those groups lead children to experiment with potentially fatal sex practices that spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.” Lustig Decl. Ex. A (The Washington Times, “Gay-Straight” Clubs in Schools Anger Foes, Nov. 17, 2004).

14. In 2004, Robert Marshall, one of the co-sponsors of House Bill Number 751, authored an article in The Washington Post in which he referred to marriage between gay and lesbian individuals as “counterfeit marriage” and stated that the Affirmation of Marriage Act was “needed to resist the agenda of activist homosexuals” because the “danger” they posed was “real.” Lustig Decl. Ex. B (The Washington Post, No “New Jim Crow” in Virginia, July 3, 2004).-

21. Then-Virginia Senator (now-Attorney General) Kenneth Cuccinelli urged his colleagues to adopt the Marshall/Newman Amendment by claiming “[t]he homosexual left has been on the attack against marriage and family for 40 years,” and that the amendment was necessary for “regaining lost ground.” Lustig Decl. Ex. E (The Washington Post, Va. Senate Backs Ban on Gay Marriage, Feb. 8, 2005).

27. Virginia’s hate crime law does not punish violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation. Va. Code § 18.2-57(B).

28. From 2004, when the Affirmation of Marriage Act was adopted, to today, there have been at least 270 hate crimes in Virginia targeting individuals based on their sexual orientation. Lustig Decl. ¶ 17 (attesting to tabulation of statistics available at www.fbi.gov).

The plaintiffs the argued that under the ruling in United States v Windsor, such anti-gay animus rendered the alleged rational basis for Virginia's gay marriage ban unconstitutional. This was followed up in the memorandum of law filed by the Attorney General's Office which stated in part as follows:

The
Supreme Court has consistently ruled that marriage is a fundamental right
protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment. It is among the rights "'of basic importance in our society,'
rights sheltered by the Fourteenth Amendment against the State's unwarranted
usurpation, disregard, or disrespect." It
is no exaggeration to say that marriage is "the most important relation in
life." Because marriage is a fundamental right, a state law that
"significantly interferes" with that right is subject to
"critical examination," not review for whether a mere "rational
basis" supports it.

Virginia's law denying the right to marry to
same-sex couples cannot escape strict scrutiny on the theory that only
"traditional" marriage is "fundamental." The nearly
identical argument was rejected in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
. . . Loving teaches that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the
fundamental right to marry even if the way in which it is practiced would have
surprised the framers or made them uncomfortable.

Loving cannot be distinguished
on the ground, advanced by prior government counsel, that the "core
purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to guarantee to African Americans equal
fundamental rights," a purpose not implicated by Virginia's ban on
same-sex marriage. (Doc. 65, Def.'s Reply Mem. at 4.) The Supreme Court
rejected such limiting constructions in Zablocki:

The
Court's opinion [in Loving] could have rested solely on the ground that
the statutes discriminated on the basis of race in violation of the Equal
Protection Clause. But the Court went on to hold that the laws arbitrarily
deprived the couple of a fundamental liberty protected by the Due Process
Clause, the freedom to marry...

Although Loving arose in the context of racial
discrimination, prior and subsequent decisions of this Court confirm that the
right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals. 434 U.S. at 383-84 (emphasis added) (internal
citations omitted).

Loving rejected the same
arguments offered in support of the marriage ban here. "Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana, The
Life of Reason: or the Phases of Human Progress 284 (1920). It is worth
observing, therefore, that the arguments raised in Virginia's brief in Loving
to defend Virginia's ban on interracial marriage are almost identical to the
arguments that have been offered to support Virginia's ban on same-sex
marriage... The injustice of Virginia's position in Loving will not be
repeated this time.

The
arguments for applying heightened scrutiny are compelling, as the United States
correctly explained at length in its merits brief in Windsor. For example,
"[g]ay and lesbian people have suffered a significant history of
discrimination in this country. No court to consider the question has concluded
otherwise, and any other conclusion would be insupportable."26 We also
note that the claim that a same-sex-marriage ban does not discriminate on the
basis of gender, on the theory that it applies "equally" to men and
women, sounds disturbingly like Virginia's theory in Loving that its
interracial marriage ban did not discriminate on the basis of race,
"because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the
Negro participants in an interracial marriage," 388 U.S. at 7-8.

Defendants: The arguments of the defendants and homophobic former AG Ken Cuccinelli basically boil down to (A) there is no fundamental right to "homosexual" marriage, (B) the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is not applicable to homosexuals and was intended for the protection of African Americans, (C) legislation specifically targeting gays is not subject to heightened scrutiny, and (D) the court must uphold the legislative/voter determination that heterosexual marriage is the "optimal social structure for educating, socializing, and preparing its future citizens to become productive participants in civil society." The Cucinnelli memorandum of law in defense of Virginia's gay marriage ban states in part as follows (I am at a loss as to why Cuccinelli tied the origins of civil law marriage in Virginia to religious beliefs, but he did):

Marriage in Virginia Has Always Been Defined As Between One Man and One Woman. The Act of Uniformity of 1559, 1 Eliz., c.2, required the use of the Book of Common Prayer of 1559 in the Church of England, the church established by law. An Act for the Uniformitie of Common Praier, and Service in the Church, and the Admistracion of the Sacramentes, http://justus.anglican.org.resources/bcp/1559/front_matter_1559.htm. Both the rubrics and the liturgy of marriage required a man and a woman.

In Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that Minnesota's law defining marriage as an institution for opposite-sex couples violated neither due process nor equal protection. Id. at 187. The United States Supreme Court dismissed the appeal for want of a substantial federal question. Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972). This resolution is dispositive. Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 344-45 (1975).

Neither the United States Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has held that homosexuality constitutes a suspect class entitled to heightened scrutiny. Instead they have said the opposite.

And same-sex marriage cannot be a fundamental right because by definition a "right" that was first recognized in this country a decade ago is not deeply rooted in our history and traditions. . . . . The traditional definition of marriage must be upheld "'if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.'" Id

Therein lies a fundamental difference between this case and Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). There can be no question that a core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to guarantee to African Americans equal fundamental rights, including the right of marriage. . . . . When Plaintiffs claim that Virginia's law "is also subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause because it discriminates against Plaintiffs on the basis of sexual orientation," (Doc. 60, 9 of 24), the proposition is simply counterfactual. Marriage is defined in terms of a man and woman, husband and wife, and not in terms of sexual orientation.

Amicus Curiae: In addition to the briefs filed by the plaintiffs and the defendants there are two other briefs filed by supposed amicus curiae, The Family Foundation and five right wing professors. Not surprisingly given the racists undercurrents of its activities, The Family Foundation's brief basically makes a states' rights argument that would have done the pre Civil War Southern states proud. Under its argument, states should be able to do whatever they want when it comes to marriage and, by extension, the the argument suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in correctly in Loving v. Virginia. Here's a samplingly:

For this court to rule that the United States Constitution mandates that the State redefine marriage would unnecessarily federalize a question that is undoubtedly within the “residuum” of power reserved to the states. As the Supreme Court has noted: “One of the principal areas in which this Court has customarily declined to intervene is the real of domestic relations.” Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 12 (2004). To intervene in state regulation of marriage would “thrust the Federal Judiciary into an area previously left to state courts and legislatures.” . . . . There is no reason for this court to depart from this “long established precept” by holding that the federal courts now have the authority to superintend the domestic relations laws of the states.

Beyond the importance of safeguarding local self-government, federalism also advances interstate pluralism. “Interstate pluralism is the feature of our federal system that reflects the ability of each state to establish itself as a distinct community. It entails the ability to make and enforce choices on foundational matters such as fundamental ordering of . . . family relations” and “seeks to protect each state’s ability to create and enforce these fundamental orderings and thereby define its society.”

Interstate pluralism allows states to experiment with various social and legal policies free from interference and to reflect the unique preference and attributes of the state.

The brief filed by the five far right professors is no less bizarre and basically strives to accuse the American Pychological Association and every other legitimate medical/mental health association which has supported same sex-marriage and gay parenting of being patently wrong. Not surprisingly, the professors' brief cites the now thoroughly discredited Regnerus study (which was financed by - surprise, surprise - right wing anti-gay organizations). Here are samples of the brief:

A persistent claim by supporters of same-sex marriage is that there is “no difference” inthe outcomes of children raised by a biological mother and father and those who have been raised by two women or two men. That claim has also been advanced by associations like the American Psychological Association (APA). But as recent scholarship indicates, the claim is difficult to support because nearly all of the studies upon which the “no difference” assertion is based are rather limited, involving non-random, non-representative samples, often with relatively few participants. . . . .These and other methodological limitations make the APA’s confident “no difference” conclusion suspect.

With so many significant unanswered questions about whether children develop as well in same-sex households as in opposite-sex households, it remains prudent for government to continue to recognize marriage as a union of a man and a woman, thereby promoting what is known to be an ideal environment for raising children.

Frankly, from all that I have read, the professors' brief is a big, deliberate lie that is being foisted on the Court. In a perfect world, Judge Wright Allen would hit the professors' counsel from the misnamed Alliance Defending Freedom with sanctions if not contempt charges.

Time will tell how the Court will rule, but the better - and more honest - legal analysis in my view after 36 years of legal experience is on the side of the plaintiffs and Attorney General Mark Herring.

Translate This Page

Contact Me to Order Title Work

LGBT Legal Services

About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

Disclaimer on Opinions and Content

This Blog contains content that may be innapropriate for readers under the legal age of 18. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Thank you

This is an opinion and commentary blog and the opinions and contents of this Blog - including opinions expressed concerning opponents of LGBT equality - are the opinions only of the individual blogger and should not be attributed to any other individuals or to any organization of which the blogger is a past or current member.

Followers

Michael-in-Norfolk disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, operability, or availability of information or material displayed on this site and does not claim credit for any images or articles featured on this site, unless otherwise noted. All visual content is copyrighted to it's respectful owners. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, and Michael-in-Norfolk does not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site's content. If you own rights to any of the images or articles, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact Michael-in-Norfolk via e-mail and they will be promptly removed. Michael-in-Norfolk contains links to other Internet sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience and are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information or content in such site has been endorsed or approved by this blog.